Completely Free Ringtones

The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, a music industry licensing group, is claiming that when a mobile phone plays a ringtone, that it is the same as a public performance by the artist, and they should be able to collect royalties from this “performance”. The ASCAP suggests that when a ringtone (even free ringtones) are loaded onto a mobile phone, it can be set off by an incoming call while the phone owner is in public where others could overhear the “performance”. They claim there is “no question” it meets the definition of a public performance under terms of the federal Copyright Act of 1976. The ruling is unlikely to pass with large wireless providers already filing against the ASCAP’s legal claims in court. One website has claimed the ASCAP is looking for as much as one thousand dollars per “performance”, retroactive to the first date of sale. How they plan to track such performances remains a mystery.

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